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L'Esprit de l'Escalier

Lily Tuck

Issue 119, Summer 1991

In the photograph, my mouth is slightly open. I am talking to the man sitting next to me. The man is the writer, Alberto Moravia. Next to him, there is a woman. She is smiling at the camera, I can’t think of her name.The other person in the photograph is Massimo. Massimo is looking of if, looking away somewhere, looking elsewhere. This means that Massimo s face is seen in profile—you cannot see how good-looking he is. He is so good-looking,in fact,that Alberto Moravia said that he had made one of the characters in his book look just like Massimo, only this same character, Alberto Moravia also said, had met a bad end.

Moravia gave me this book of his to read, but I left it in the car on the way home to Rome from Fregene. Fregene was where the photograph was taken. Fregene was where we had lunch the day I had to get into the car and drive back to Rome with Alberto Moravia instead of with Massimo.